Question #5

YSU has become extremely top heavy.  More and more administrators are being added, but essential faculty are not being hired/replaced.  Academic departments are being forced to hire more and more adjuncts who are honestly not invested in the future/success of YSU.  Also, more and more money is being filtered into athletics, but this is supposed to be an educational institution, not an athletic institution.

Take inventory of our current progress towards the most recent strategic plan.  Update strategic goals based on current progress and future trends/needs/objectives.  Identify next steps to move the university towards where we want to be.

Making the student's education the #1 priority.  Making it as good as the best higher education institutions, and affordable.

Appreciate your faculty and staff.  The staff knows more than anyone about the day to day operations of this university; especially those with seniority.  You should want to keep them, not want them to retire.

How are we going to effectively serve our students in a day and age when we are doing more with less?

For this institution to achieve it's best possible future, the administration will need to increase compensation to all employees, not just themselves.

Focus on the educational mission and construct ways to make the support services secondary to the academic services. The university is providing more services that have little to do with the work that takes place in the classroom. New positions and programs that have "support" missions are funded and lauded, but there are programs which are desperate for new faculty lines and resources to help students achieve academic goals. I concede that there are departments that and faculty who don't make good faith efforts to serve their students, but the vast majority are working harder each year. Creating "portals" for clerical functions has forced each faculty member to do the work of clerical staff. It's frustrating and not good for morale. It seems like a waste of human resources to use faculty in this way. Since I was hired the university has always been fiscally responsible, which is welcome news when so many of those around us have been wasteful, however, the austerity imposed on us has a cost. It's hard to recruit faculty (searches often happen very late which can mean outstanding candidates have already accepted other positions before we get approval for initial interviews), those hired into programs that are starved for faculty often find themselves taking on the role of middle managers just to keep the program alive (this leads to decreased scholarship and high levels of burnout [particularly because these thankless tasks are often unrewarded by peers and administrators alike]), the categories for faculty in the contract make it hard to hire people with a mix of professional and academic experience (bring back instructors with the 4-4 load, and add a category for professionals in residence, both with an expectation for service that would help alleviate the burden of massive service loads), requests for reassigned time, even those made in pursuit of the goals stated in strategic plans are seen as, at best, trifling, and at worst, trying to dodge work responsibilities.

We need board members who thoroughly understand what we do as educators.  I feel that there continues to be a disconnect.  We have increasing problems with our students' behavior and too much emphasis on running an institution of higher education as a business exacerbates the behavioral problems.  Seasoned educators in decision-making roles will allow for proper policy and procedure administration.

I think YSU should focus on being a university, not just an extension of high school.  Focus on giving students a great education in the discipline of their choice, without dumbing down the program to accommodate the masses.  Offer courses/programs to help the students that need to catch up before they enter their disciplines and each individual program will do better.

Consistency of excellence across all departments on campus; better communication

Student success and retention.

invest in technology! This includes working, up to date computers for faculty, staff, and students. Encouraging technology use in the classroom and in online courses.

Bridging the "them and us", administration vs faculty divide that exists at YSU.  The best plan in the world is still implemented by people and if the people are divided the plan will fail.

I believe that we need to reconsider the role of sports in our institution.  A good portion of the tuition dollars that come in from students enrolling in the courses I teach ends up subsidizing the athletics program.  In a sense, because athletics does not generate enough revenue to pay for itself, we effectively plan for the deficits in the operating budget.  We have a choice, in my mind:  Will we exist as an institution of higher learning or will we be more accurately labeled Youngstown State Administrative and Sports Complex, which just happens to provide some classes to students in order to fund other activities?

To me, our best possible future is to provide higher education, not drain the operating budget to support a sports (and administrative) complex.

We need to emphasize and encourage working across disciplinary boundaries.  This should occur in research, education, and service.  We must also emphasize small class sizes and personal attention to our students who are often first generation college students.  Finally, we must emphasize research.  We cannot call ourselves as university without fully funding the office of grants and sponsored programs and the urban research cornerstone efforts.

We need to move out of the silos that exist around this campus. There are far too many issues facing our students today, and the lack of cross-department understanding/knowledge/training limits our abilities to help students. We need a general onboarding schedule for anyone who has a student-serving position (including all faculty) so that they are educated about university systems, offices, structures, processes, etc. While we can certainly expect that our students should be able to navigate basic trouble-shooting, they also should not come up against so many barriers in seeking out the help they need, especially when they are barriers built by our own hands. If we can't help our students work through their issues from any place on campus, we're dooming ourselves to continued low persistence. And that not only hurts our bottom line and our reputation, but it's also unethical for us to provide such poor service to our students.

Please concentrate on getting enough faculty and staff to efficiently handle the educational needs of our students.  Development of new courses, involvement in research, lower the student to faculty ratio.

Slow the new building and quit putting new facades on old structures without addressing those structural and infrastructural issues.

To make sure the students know that their opinions matter and they are being heard.

We need a full evaluation of resources and how they are allocated to obligations and initiatives.  We do not currently have our resources allocated in effectively manage the expectations placed upon those employed by the University.  Maybe we need to consider combining departments to create schools (i.e. Psychology, Sociology, Social Work, etc. to create the School of Behavioral Sciences).  There are many offices on campus who do not operate efficiently (from an outside perspective) and could be combined to streamline the student experience and to better use what little resources we have at our disposal.

On a separate note, we have so many administrators (how many AVPs do we need?) and so few staff on the front lines.  On top of that, annually we see administrators getting $10K raises while most of us are now bringing home less than we were 8 years ago.  This administration seems to value staff so little that it's nearly embarrassing.  I know the University chose to pass up the climate study for this year, but I think the climate has gotten worse.  I strongly believe so many have just become apathetic about the culture here.  If the University does not take care of its employees, those employees are not going to take the care of our students that they need. 

Those of us who are still trying to excel at our jobs continually run into roadblocks placed upon us by our supervisors and/or administrators.  One would think that administrators would want to clear the path for their employees to shine instead of creating a climate that makes it so difficult that many of us want to give up...or do by seeking employment at other institutions where we hope to feel more valued.

Most (if not all) research shows that you need to demonstrate appreciation for internal customers (i.e. employees) so that they will excel at taking care of external customers (i.e. students).

Since YSU is an institution of Higher Learning, to obtain the goal of getting to its best possible future, how about eliminating athletics?  Only 3% of the students are involved in athletics, but the other 97% are FORCED to contribute to all the ridiculous spending.  Fifteen people are paid just in football.  And, YSU football stinks.  So does basketball, baseball.....  However, we have an engineering college that is superior.  Moser Hall is old and dirty and there should be a new building.  Ward Beecher houses all the science department and that building needs to be torn down.  START FOCUSING ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND NOT ON SPORTS.  Those of us that send our children to YSU to get a degree want to see our children get the best education they can.  YSU has many nurses, teachers, CPAs.  How many professional athletes came from YSU?  The second thing to do is get rid of so many directors, associate provots, ............... Not enough workers and too many supervisors that do NOTHING.

Developing high-level service learning opportunities for students, faculty, and staff in partnership with the top private, non-profit, and public sector partners in the region, nation, and internationally.

Enabling student success by ensuring that all students have the opportunity to graduate on-time and are job ready day one - being presented to several employers in their chosen field of endeavor.

This is a very broad question, but I think in terms of what will have the most impact on students and there are two areas could have a very large impact on student success: Faculty Development and revamping our current advising model. The reputation of YSU would greatly improve if we had more full time faculty and fewer adjunct faculty.  Also, if faculty could receive mandatory training for "how to teach" our students would be much better prepared and they would be more satisfied.  It seems a collaboration with BCOE faculty would be a perfect match for such a project.  We have the expertise on campus - why not use it? As for advising, our current model just isn't working and there is widespread disdain on the part of students. Although each college and major is very different, there are some things an advisor should always do such as entering advisement notes in Banner.  Just as registration sends out registration dates to each student, advisors should have a way to send a "it's time to make an appointment with me" announcement/email. Or, even better, allow the students access to a system where they can answer a few questions and then get access to schedule an appointment with their advisor.  Our students are very confused and this is one of the reasons we have students graduate with so many more semester hours than they need.  Let's empower our students!

Establishing a unique institutional identity tied to expertise of the faculty and distinctive quality of campus life, and conveying this through clearly expressed media than convinces potential students of the institution's merit.  Along these lines, the website and recruitment materials are very poor compared with our competition, and this needs to be corrected.

Knowledge and Understanding of Education, we are an institution that transforms the environment and people surrounding it. It is only through education that any transformation can occur. Education is not a business and should not be decided strictly by head count. Many of the university clients (students) are seeking degrees to transform their life, environment and community. Short-sighted strategic plans that focus on a narrow scope of programs, is missing the mission of an Educational Institution. The Youngstown area relies on YSU to provide an opportunity to transform the community and all involved. We MUST not put all our emphasizes on a few programs because of head count. STOP THE INSANITY with number crunchers, look at quality and look at the impact on individual and community lives. There are programs that provide more than impact to our community as a whole, and I am tired of the short-sighted administration that is too far removed from the real lives and struggles of those in our community.

Create more opportunities for consistency in the departments.  More specifically, professors.  Some departments rely heavily on part-time people and due to only part-time opportunity, there is often a revolving door of people.   This creates inconsistency for the students and in instruction of the curriculum for that department.

What YSU needs the most is a strong leadership at all levels, in particular at the upper and middle- administration levels. A leadership that has vision, transparent, and is capable of making decisions on long-term and day in day out issues, in the interest of the faculty and students, capable of holding up principles, and be fair. It calls for integrity and ability of the leaders. A respectable leadership will guide YSU into a promising future.

Campus climate. We made it a priority for one year, and haven't really revisited it since. Our faculty and staff are overworked, underpaid, and often times feel under-appreciated. Our students can see it written all over their faces, and that's not translating well as a whole. Because of this, we have areas on campus that aren't working up to their potential (lack of staffing resources being one of the largest contributing factors to this) and our students are reaping the effects of it.

Supporting research-focused faculty and facilities. Systematically recruiting strong graduate students internally and externally.

Define one mission/identity for YSU and stick to it. Once chosen, the mission must be supported.

Avoid choosing two or more conflicting missions/identities.

Contextualize the instruction! Illustrate the importance of what we're teaching by helping students see how it's connected to their own contexts.

For example, in an economics course, why not augment students' understanding of theory (and ho-hum completion of online homework exercises) by also analyzing the shutdown of the Lordstown plant? Have students read news articles, talk to some affected community members, look at available corporate and government data, then draw on the textbook theories they are learning to identify causes, effects, and evaluate possible solutions?  [I thought of this as I drove past the plant today...]

I think at the end of any YSU course, we want students to be conscious of the value of what they just learned, and be able to answer these questions:

-What did I learn in this course that will now help me make better sense of my world?

-What ideas or skills did I acquire in this course that will enable me to:

1) keep on learning more

2) successfully manage new challenges / solve new problems?

Making explicit, concrete connections between what we teach, and our students' various contexts, will help them recognize the value of what they learn. It also ties into the need to differentiate YSU's educational offerings from everyone else's. This approach should work equally well for humanities, social sciences, or STEM.

Privacy Response:  Please feel free to share my comments.

While that is question that covers a BROAD ARRAY OF TOPICS, I feel that a beginning component to creating a best possible future is by building excellent customer service internally and externally.  By that I mean, give your internal constituents the right tools to do their jobs efficiently through training, technology, proper organizational hierarchies, etc.  Externally, we should be making it easier for people trying to communicate with YSU to do so, again through technology, services, having properly trained staff, etc.

Obviously there are many areas of focus in order to accomplish this.  Attached is a link to an article in Forbes Magazine which outlines a great start to building a better future at an organization.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/01/14/the-14-principles-of-the-future-organization/#32a69b863ec2

1) effective use of resources: If there are x number of incoming students, then there will be need for y number of sections of each course;

2) potential to create a consistent set of honors courses: Since the students will have a mandatory core, there will always be a critical mass of students and courses to enable honors sections to be scheduled regularly;

3) consistency of expectations: standards for each course can be set at a reasonable and stable level across all sections. I would go so far as to suggest group grading to ensure consistency in the application of standards, but at the very least there should be a common rubric for use in grading.

4) inculcation of the productive learning habits needed for academic success: e.g., some courses might consist of lecture, requiring note taking, others might emphasize writing in which outlines and drafts are required and in which the writing itself, in addition to the content, is rigorously evaluated.

5) distinctiveness: a core curriculum might contribute to YSU's ability to present  itself as different from other state institutions

Although I have my own ideas of what a core curriculum should look like, I have purposely avoided any statement here about what I think the content should be. In my mind the specific content is less important than the establishment of consistency of expectations and inculcation of beneficial learning habits.

What is most important for YSU to have the best possible future is to develop and offer more cutting edge programs, remain affordable, offer more online and evening courses including early morning and weekend courses and increase recruitment of non-traditional student population.

I feel that we must be realistic in the actual costs and amount of time, labor and staffing numbers for any of the goals and benchmarks we agree on in the newest strategic plan. Simply piling on "more" is not going to make YSU the best it can be. Some departments and vital areas are already at skeleton staffing levels and are experiencing diminishing returns - it's good to be lean and mean, but the efficiency levels and quality of our outputs will suffer if we agree to goals that we are not staffed up enough to meet.

I believe that the success of our university begins with the employees. We need to find ways to ensure that ALL employees feel valued and appreciated.

From a practical perspective: As enrollment is increasing each year, we are going to need to expand classroom and faculty to accommodate. Nursing had to turn away a large number of qualified applicants because we are limited to 100 students starting due to finite resources, rooms and faculty. I'm sure other programs are expanding as well. Obviously this is not a new concept, but one I would like to see directly addressed as we move forward.

To do so we need to engage junior and senior students in all fields of study to become inclusive with the surrounding cities by utilizing our YSU students to assist businesses, government, city hall and high schools, etc. by doing so they are able to understand the information they have learned and can come up with new ways to improve our University's presence in all future aspects.  Making this type of involvement class projects  with Faculty's involvement to address and possibly correct whatever the critical issues are and be vested in the future.  Our students  are a great asset and as human resources they aren't valued while they are learning their field of study.  They need to be incorporated to help guide YSU into the future with innovative ways to constantly improve our communities and  to keep them invested in the future where they feel their contributions matter.

It is evident as a STEM professor that we will not higher new faculty, i.e. full time tenure track professors (not that we need to).  However we must better integrate our existing programs. We must better facilitate students taking courses between existing related fields. Our curricula needs to be modified to clearly support interdisciplinary studies. For example a biology student interested in ecology should be able to easily take class from geography and geology for a seamless program, not just as electives.

Administration appears to value athletics over academics. I believe that more resources should be devoted to academics rather than to athletics. For example why do we have a decrepit greenhouse on a main avenue on campus? Is that attractive to students?

Shouldn't administration provide funds to rehabilitate the greenhouse? Why did we need to wait over 20 years?

We must prioritize academics and academic programming. We must also discuss ways to ensure that FACULTY have all of the resources and staffing they need to make YSU an exceptional university.

New majors that embrace new technologies. Robotics, social media communications, e commerce. All the back end stuff that makes these technologies tick. Whatever is new in nursing, medicine. Our students of the future should be on the cusp of these thing. Not just as users of the tech, but developers.

Treat staff like family. The devoted members of the campus community should be recognized and appreciated. There are many of these people in the background serving students with their whole hearts.